Detroit Become Human

Detroit Become Human is a video game created in a third person point of view in which the player controls most of the character’s decisions. The video game allows the player to play as three characters, all of them being androids. The first one is a caretaker android named Markus who turns deviant and disobedient after gaining consciousness. Markus then tries to free others from abiding by their expected behavior. The second android was a police investigator named Connor, working with lieutenant Hanks who was an alcoholic that absolutely despised androids. Connor was mainly programmed to hunt down deviant androids such as Markus. The final character is an android named Kara. Kara is a housekeeper android that takes care of a little girl. In Markus’s case, he is the savior of all androids that gains consciousness and leads the rest of the androids into protests. Markus has the choice of whether or not to turn these deviant androids into becoming aggressive. On the other hand, Connor is an android that abides by his programmed behavior and may only deviate and become self-aware by the end of the game based on the player’s decision. Even though Connor expresses the most humanity, unlike other androids, when Connor dies mid game, he will instantly be replaced by another “Connor” and the game will continue as if he never died. This makes us question what we perceive as “alive”. This shows that even though we might feel as though Connor might be a human, this thought is debunked by the fact that he is replaceable and therefore nonhuman. The third android, which is Kara, who might gain consciousness in order to act as opposed to her programming and actually protect herself and the little girl from the abusive father or just act as expected of her and get destroyed by him. Additionally, if the player doesn’t let Kara become self-aware, Alice, the young girl she was supposed to protect, will die. After a while it’s revealed that Alice is in fact an android made to act as a replacement of the father’s daughter while her mother took her away. After this revelation, players might feel a sense of manipulation as some of the decisions made were to protect her as if she were a human. But that raises the question as to whether we would’ve treated the android differently and why? Would we have put the “life” of Kara at stake knowing that Alice was an android? Or would we have let them both die as they aren’t necessarily “alive”. Another concept depicted in the video game is the uncanny valley, since, during the game, players would come across multiple protests made by humans against androids due to people starting to not be able to tell the difference between humans and androids. This shows how humans tend to get uncomfortable and go to the extent of despising androids when they start to resemble humans way too much.